I am still trying to figure out how the experience and fun factor of the shard is added to by throwing in a bunch of specific debuffs associated with eating, slowing regens etc stuff people trained.. so in other words hyper realism.

The food buffs will not be just stats, nor will they be a similar level of benefit to the magic fish. Some buffs could be that low (IE: for the new fish types in the old-world maps, which have new recipes to cook those fish), but the Elysium food ones will not be. That would be a very useless cooking update and I try really hard not to make useless content.

Why have any detriment at all? Well, beyond the fact that it's basic game design (don't give too many positives without some negatives as well), there are a few main reasons-

A hunger system has been requested many times in my years here, and it's something the staff have discussed and wanted to do for a long time. We also didn't want it to be ridiculously serious like in other games where you will actually die if you don't eat every few minutes. Eating once per few hours is barely going to affect gameplay. It isn't hyper-realistic. It's reasonable, especially given the fantastic buffs you'll be able to obtain from food.

It adds to the overall experience of the game, making cooking viable and important again, and in turn also boosting other areas of the game like farming and fishing. It expands our options for mob/quest encounters and boss fights - some could boost or reduce your satiation. Without a need to eat, then those types of encounters either can't exist or instead become something that actively removes your actual buffs which would be far more painful for the player than simply needing to eat again.

It also expands the types of buffs we can include on different foods. With over 250 new cooking recipes, trying to make each food have its own individual validity and usefulness becomes extremely challenging. The more beneficial options I have to choose from, the more balanced the system can be and the more viable we can make the different foods. Otherwise we slowly end up with the same crap we see with BCs. Everybody decides on the "ultimate" buff combo of maybe 5 types of food, and then the other 245+ are basically useless. I recognize that it's impossible to fully avoid this type of issue but I aim to make it so that there are many, many really viable foods. I want as many as possible to be seen as worth cooking even 3 years from now. So being able to add things like slower digestion, overcap satiation and so on just adds to my list of possible buffs and spreads things out a bit better over the massive number of food items that are coming.

I think a lot of folks didn't really read +C's original post and just made an assumption about what the hunger system means for you as players, because we've seen a lot of replies that ignored things already covered earlier in the thread. The gist, again, is that you'll only need to eat every few hours. Eating will involve nothing different than it does right now - double-click your preferred food item a couple times, and go on with your day. Regen drain is a better, less distracting option than spell fizzling, stumbling/falling over, actual HP/mana/stamina loss, or death. All of which were previously discussed as options and rejected for that exact reason - they're a lot more invasive to gameplay.

I know that a lot of folks are very resistant to changes to the game, but the game has to change in order to grow. The shard needs to stay fresh and interesting, it needs new content to be added, and not all of that content can always be optional things. In order to make our little internet home a better, more fun, more interesting place, we sometimes have to make changes that do affect everyone. In this case, it isn't just being thrown together willy-nilly, it's something we've discussed for years, and started making definitive plans for months ago. A lot of thought and debate has gone into it, and into how to implement it in a way that isn't overly onerous to the player. Y'all do a lot of other things in the game a whole lot more often than once per 2-5 hours, this will barely be a blip on your radar after you get in the habit of it.

Is there going to be a display icon or something we can drag and drop onto our screens that shows us how soon we need to eat... like a Grey for don't need to eat at all, green when you could eat but don't really need to, yellow for starting to lose regens/buffs and red meaning "Danger Will Robinson, Danger!i!"

I understand some food may have specific buffs like 30 minutes or 1 hour etc, just a more physical display of how far along the hunger scale you are...

On an added note... is there going to be achievements for surviving killing some big baddie on totally starving?

Glyph - i like the idea for those smelly mobs Maybe also you can't consume food if there's horse dung laying around (no appetite), more of an easteregg thing.

About adding this to the levelable menu, no we didn't consider that to be an option. Could be added, but I think nobody would want to waste points on something where you have to just eat less frequently, instead where it really matters (damage bonuses). I think it would be a cool thing to add to various loot...

Yes there will be an icon in the [buffs that will show your current status of hunger & regen rates. I like the idea for hunger icon to be colored to show the status (going to have to be a separate icon then), so you can see right away what your satiation is.

And there can also be an achievement related to this

+Colibri, Administrator of UO Excelsior Shard

Don't know what the purpose of your life is? Well then make something up! (Old Colibrian proverb)

Ohhh realism!! I have an idea. After a couple days of no food we die. BUT when we do eat, all it does other than keep us from starving to death, is make us sleep for an hour or 2. 0 stam, for that time. And as time goes on, our chars get fatter until we weigh 1000 stone.

Asmodean wrote:First off, I'd like to say I hate being forced to participate in a system, which is exactly what this does.

So, I'm suggesting a way to automate it, within the game. Set a food, when you get below whatever threshold hunger, you auto-eat it to become full once again.

For example, if cooked bird is your food of choice, and it adds 20 hunger, every time you hit 133% overstuffed, you would eat a cooked bird.

At least this way, it's not too much of a hassle and hindrance to gameplay.

edit: also, you still have to buy/make the food, so it shouldn't affect much other than convenience.

(re-posted here since +C linked to this thread.)

Asmodean. How about you create a macro for Razor or UOSteam that targets fishsteaks in you backpack makes you eat them?You could have it run every 30 mins and consume 6-8 fishsteaks....... unless you have the above programs already automating some other menial task, like.... spells, healing, etc.

Are we really going to complain about being forced to eat? After 15+yrs of UO I finally took some fishing skill....so I can feed myself. 15+ years or not needing the skill, no complaints here.What's the point of a cooking skill and new revamps if all the items are is deco?Isn't this what the gms are trying to accomplish, making unused skills valid again?

Asmodean wrote:First off, I'd like to say I hate being forced to participate in a system, which is exactly what this does.

So, I'm suggesting a way to automate it, within the game. Set a food, when you get below whatever threshold hunger, you auto-eat it to become full once again.

For example, if cooked bird is your food of choice, and it adds 20 hunger, every time you hit 133% overstuffed, you would eat a cooked bird.

At least this way, it's not too much of a hassle and hindrance to gameplay.

edit: also, you still have to buy/make the food, so it shouldn't affect much other than convenience.

(re-posted here since +C linked to this thread.)

Asmodean. How about you create a macro for Razor or UOSteam that targets fishsteaks in you backpack makes you eat them?You could have it run every 30 mins and consume 6-8 fishsteaks....... unless you have the above programs already automating some other menial task, like.... spells, healing, etc.

Are we really going to complain about being forced to eat? After 15+yrs of UO I finally took some fishing skill....so I can feed myself. 15+ years or not needing the skill, no complaints here.What's the point of a cooking skill and new revamps if all the items are is deco?Isn't this what the gms are trying to accomplish, making unused skills valid again?

But hey that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Making skills valid is awesome. Adding buffs to cooking is awesome. Forcing me to eat, or lose the regens i paid 6500 ED for on 13 relayers, not so much. I forgot I commented earlier in this thread, but still pretty much feel the same, and feel this auto-eat within the game itself would be a welcome addition. If others don't feel this way cool. I'll suck it up and get an eating macro.

Request, could you put roast pigs on npc vendors? The reason why I'm asking is years ago I played on another shard that required you to eat. If you ate an apple or a pie you would be hungry again soon. I always bought roast pigs off npc vendors because if you ate one, you wouldn't be able to eat for quite awhile because you were so full. Makes it a lot less tedious to always be 2clicking pies or whatever.

On another note, if someone makes an easyUO or UOSteam script to auto eat could they post it, or send it to me if they don't want it public.